


Symbiosis

by Woad



Series: Tiny Bang 2016 [5]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Iron Man (Comic), Marvel 616
Genre: Chains, Crack Treated Seriously, Getting Together, Insecure Tony, Kidnapping, M/M, Pining Tony Stark, Superior Iron Man armor, no Hydra Cap, post-Pleasant Hill, pre-CWII, sentient armor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7574995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woad/pseuds/Woad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony accidentally frees the Endo-Sym armor, which has a nasty semi-sentience based on his inverted self. It also seems to be fixated on one thing: Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Locked](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/215674) by coastertoaster. 



> I'm not an expert on Venom or Symbiotes or the Endo-Sym armor, so the how-and-the-why of the suit is very handwavey in this.

Tony is in so much trouble.

He knows that MJ was just trying to be helpful. She had no way of knowing. And Tony really should have recognized the silver cannister she had left on his desk from the San Francisco clean up crew.

But no. It was late and his sleep-deprived mind had been on half a dozen things: the board questioning his governance of the company, the search for his biological parents, and the emergence of an Inhuman precog. Tony had popped the lid without bothering to reach back through the haze and jog his memory first.

In his defense, he made the thing practically in another lifetime.

He barely had enough time to bark at FRIDAY, tell her to send out a priority alert, before fluid silver slid over him, completely engulfing Tony.

Here’s the thing about the blue and silver Endo-Sym armor that he wore in the wake of Red Onslaught: it’s based on Venom’s physiology. The way the Symbiote species links mind with body gave him the ability to perfectly contour the suit to his whim at any moment.

Of course, there were a few potential pitfalls. But Tony was clever. He circumvented the tendency for the Symbiote to influence the host's mind by programming his own brainwaves into the suit. He’d had a lovely little echo chamber full of his own hubris.

And that’s exactly why Tony’s in trouble now. He can feel his own thoughts. They are all Tony at the core, but with a strangely alien tint, as if filtered through a fun house mirror. They’re greedy and narcissistic and they make Tony feel sick and ashamed. He can't fathom how the other heroes allowed him to run around like this for months.

He was a monster.

He pushes back against the suit’s thoughts, and the horror he feels helps in the fight to keep his own thoughts distinct.

Currently the suit has him in the air. He doesn't know where they're headed, and that worries him. The last time he was kidnapped by a sentient suit, he wound up on a desert island for a week and nearly died. Without Steve’s training, he might not have made it at all.

Maybe the Endo-Sym suit latches on to his thought. Maybe it was always headed here from the start. Either way, Tony finds himself over a familiar part of Manhattan—over a familiar building.

The suit crashes through the roof of the old factory building in a rain of plaster and pulverized mortar, down into Steve's bedroom.

It’s the wee hours of the morning, too early even by Steve’s punishing morning regime standards. Even so, by the time the suit rises from the kneeling position it has landed in, the blond man is up, hair sleep-tousled but ready with shield in hand, even if he’s stark naked otherwise.

_God, does he sleep with it under his pillow?_ is what Tony thinks.

_Pretty,_ is what the suit thinks. And then, to Tony's horror: _mine._

Tony really shouldn't be surprised that this is what the suit decided to hijack him for. His old self was obsessed with beauty and power. And ever since Pleasant Hill, Steve very much embodies both of those things, all in one very enticing package.

Then again, Victor Von Doom fits neatly in that box too these days.

Tony wonders if it would be more or less mortifying to be doing this with Doom.

Steve lowers the shield, blinking, eyes still foggy with sleep. “Tony? What’s wrong?”

The suit doesn’t seem to be able to vocalize. It takes a step forward, and when Steve raises the shield again, suddenly unsure of his friend’s intent, Tony can feel a surge of impatience from the suit. Steve needs to go on the offensive. Tony wants to shout this at Steve, but trapped inside the suit and without a comm system, there’s nothing he can do.

The suit extends one hand, palm open, as if to fire a repulsor blast. He sees Steve brace, just as he’s done thousands of times during sparring practice. Only this time it’s not a beam of energy that erupts from his palm. The quicksilver of the suit flows outward, lightning fast. The suit has never done this in a fight with Steve before, and he’s taken completely off guard. The suit uses this to its advantage, binding Steve hand and foot before he can evade.

Steve struggles, twisting and trying to break free, even though the metal holds on tight and forces him backward, down into a chair. “Tony, what’s going on? You are Tony, aren’t you?”

He wants so very badly to tell Steve no.

Bizarrely, the suit decides to let Tony answer. The faceplate melts away, and Tony’s forced to look Steve in the eye.

“Yes and no,” Tony says, in answer to Steve’s question. And as if on cue the metal reshapes itself, forming into chains. “Semi-sentient suit that’s full Id. But I’m me in here.”

Steve blinks down at the chains, and then up at Tony. “And what exactly does it want?”

Tony frowns. Because now that Steve’s asked, he realizes he’s not entirely sure.

The suit responds to his probing thoughts slowly, as if now that it has Steve, it doesn't know either.

He can feel lust and desire and a will to dominate. But underneath that there’s a current of doubt and self-loathing. That's definitely not the old him. The old him would just take what he wanted.

Symbiote. Right. It's latched on to a part of Tony—the real one—and started incorporating his thought patterns into the fold. That gives Tony an idea.

Who would have thought his crippling inadequacies might one day prevent the worst?

“I think I may have a way out of this,” Tony says.

_Mine,_ the suit insists. _Pretty. Mine._

Tony wracks his mind for the most G-rated thing he can think of to subvert the situation. He clears his throat. “Marriage.”

Eternal bondage in matrimony. That seems to please the suit.

“Excuse me?” asks Steve, very much confused.

“It wants you. Ergo, marriage to it. Or us? I don't really know.”

“ _This_ is your plan?”

“I’m working with what I have. In the morning we can find you a nice suit and all go down to the courthouse.”

And stall, stall, stall. Tony just needs more time to assert himself, to reshape and overwrite the old thought patterns.

But then, accursed Stark that it is, the suit goes and does something completely unexpected. More of the silver armor sloughs off of Tony and coils around Steve. _Suit,_ the Endo-Sym thinks, eager and very impatient. Just Tony’s luck. Next they’re probably going to be off to kidnap a judge to make it official.

And just like that, the suit isn't the only presence in the back of Tony’s mind.

“Oh. It’s interfacing with you,” he says, startled, watching the quicksilver writhe and ripple over Steve, trying to settle on some sort of shape.

“Is that what this is?”

Tony ignores the sardonic tone in Steve’s voice and tries valiantly not to think of all the possibilities and inappropriate costumes that the Endo-Sym might try to bedeck Steve in. He really doesn't want Steve to be accidentally privy to those thoughts. And he _really_ doesn't want the suit to latch on to them either.

“It’s not fully autonomous. You can probably guide what it becomes.”

Steve looks down at the Endo-Sym armor and then his brow furrows. Steve’s expression seamlessly becomes his focused Captain America face.

His outfit, however, does not follow suit.

Though it does become one.

“That is not at all what I was hoping for,” Steve says, dismayed, looking down at his exposed swath of chest. Even without the plunging neckline, the clingy purple and yellow latex that the Endo-Sym has become leaves little to the imagination.

Tony doesn’t remember the Nomad costume being made out of latex before.

“But it _is_ clothing.This is actually a good thing,” Tony insists. He can feel the suit becoming disoriented. Three thought patterns is a lot to juggle, and Steve is about as hard-headed as they come. If Tony’s been able to push back against the Endo-Sym and crudely steer it, Steve’s bound to be able to as well.

He can already feel the first seeds of the Symbiote at odds with itself. It made a critical mistake, trying to take on two hosts. Greedy. Just like Tony’s old self. The suit wants Steve trussed up, but both Tony and Steve want Steve free and the Endo-Sym gone. Two against one. Not good odds.

His old, twisted self wasn’t afraid to fight dirty, though. A backwash of emotions floods through Tony: guilt and longing, and the consuming, terrible knowledge that this low-handed power play is the only way he’ll ever stand a chance of having Steve for himself.

But that’s not really power at all, Tony reasons. It’s just a tether, only as strong as the weakest link in the chains. Real power over something is calling and having it come willingly.

For a moment, Tony’s head is blissfully free of the Symbiote. And then a red key materializes in Tony’s hand from the silver ichor.

He breathes a sigh of relief, even as he can’t help but notice that the Endo-Sym armor has put this on Tony. He’s the one freeing Steve, rather than the Endo-Sym just withdrawing. Tony leans over Steve and rids him of the red shackles.

“You okay?” Tony asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I think so.”

Tony feels the armor in the back of his head, an oily film on the waters of the his mind. This isn’t over yet; it’s not finished. _Real power,_ the suit thinks, and Tony feels his stomach drop. Does it want him to go down on one knee in front of Steve—to pour his heart out?

_Christ_ , sometimes Tony really does hate himself. And this time it is so completely justified.

And then he realizes that it’s worse than that. Tony doesn’t have to do the _calling_ bit at all. The suit has already done it for him via the strange Symbiotic link.

“Tony,” Steve looks up at him hesitantly. “I’m not sure what I just felt. But you...do you—or did you—want something more between the two of us?”

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“There may be certain, uh, longstanding feelings but—” this is neither the time nor the place to discuss them. Possibly there will never be after this escapade.   

“But you don’t think I’d ever feel the same way.”

_How could you?_ Tony doesn’t say. Instead he gestures at the Endo-Sym still clinging to them both. “For good reason.”

A grin steals across Steve’s face. “You always think you know the answer.” Then he stands and he curls one of his yellow latex-clad hands under Tony’s chin. “But sometimes you’re dead wrong.”

“Am I?”

Steve kisses him. “Yes.”

_Not mine,_ Tony feels the thought patterns of the Endo-Sym shriveling up, _not mine,_ and he realizes that it’s coupled with the suit of armor physically receding. It withdrawls, beaten, a silver pool on the floor next to Steve’s shield.

_Yours._

With something that Tony can only describe as a psionic  _snap_ , the Endo-Sym's presence in his mind is completely gone.

Tony realizes abruptly that Steve is once again very naked. He jerks his head up, eyes front and center.

But Steve doesn’t seem troubled at all. He grins again at Tony. “You’re going to have to explain the whole marriage thing to me. I think I missed several beats there.” He looks up at the pinkening sky through the wreckage of his roof. “Actually, maybe start with the bit where you crash landed.”

Tony flushes. “Later. Please. I’d really rather not start this off on that foot, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Oh? What foot would you like to start off on?”

Tony casts about his mind, wondering how to answer that. The sounds of the city starting a new day drift through the open window. “Coffee date?”

“Sounds wonderful,” Steve says, rummaging through a drawer and pulling out a pair of khakis. He’s got a devilish twinkle in his eye as he slips them on and does up the fly. “You know, if that thing was patterned off of your thoughts—”

“A version of myself.” Tony feels obligated to correct.

Steve concedes the point. “I was just going to say that I still probably have that old Nomad costume around here…”

No. They are not doing this now. This is talk for later. “Coffee first,” Tony says adamantly. “Also, shirt.”

“Fine, fine.” Steve laughs. “But when we do talk about this, you’re going to help me look for it.”

Tony keeps his mouth shut. Mostly because he knows Steve is right.


End file.
